Description
Book SynopsisDescribes how admen, advertising agencies, and sponsors shaped U.S. radio into a commercial entertainment medium from the late 1920s until the early 1950s. Views the development of twentieth-century popular culture through the lens of the advertising and broadcasting industries. Examines the intersection of commerce and culture in American mass media.
Trade Review"Well written and organized, this book is a welcome addition to a growing number of revisionist studies of the broadcasting industry... Highly Recommended" -Choice Magazine "A Word from Our Sponsor is a truly groundbreaking study of the fateful union of broadcasting and advertising in their formative years. At long last, Meyers provides us with an in-depth, inside account of the creation and essential interdependence of these two dominant American culture industries, as sponsors and their ad agencies shaped "commercial radio" into a machine of mass entertainment and, in the process, into the nation's most effective advertising medium." -- -Thomas G. Schatz University of Texas at Austin, College of Communication "This is a terrific and much-needed book. Cynthia Meyers tells the compelling story of one of the most productive yet hidden cultural forces of the twentieth century." -- -Michele Hilmes University of Wisconsin, Madison
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1 Dramatizing a Bar of Soap: The Advertising Industry Before Broadcasting Chapter 2 The Fourth Dimension of Advertising: The Development of Commercial Broadcasting in the early 1920s Chapter 3 They Sway Millions as If by Some Magic Wand: The Advertising Industry Enters Radio in the late 1920s Chapter 4 Who Owns the Time? Advertising Agencies and Networks Vie for Control in the 1930s Chapter 5 The 1930s' Turn to the Hard Sell: Blackett-Sample-Hummert's Soap Opera Factory Chapter 6 Showmanship on Radio: Ballet, Ballyhoo, and the Soft Sell of Young & Rubicam Chapter 7 Two Agencies: Batten Barton Durstine & Osborn, Crafters of the Corporate Image, and Benton & Bowles, Radio Renegades Chapter 8 Madison Avenue in Hollywood: J. Walter Thompson and Kraft Music Hall (1936-46) Chapter 9 Advertising, Commercial Radio, and the War Effort, 1942-45 Chapter 10 On a Treadmill to Oblivion: The Peak and Sudden Decline of Network Radio in the late 1940s Conclusion Bibliography
